Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Bicyclist held up at gunpoint on Metropolitan Branch Trail

Another pistol-point mugging on the MBT, two days after a couple of other hold-ups, which were just a few weeks after a rash of earlier ones.  I see where the Metropolitan Police Department is doing its typical 'heck of a job' providing public safety.  I suspect that all of the damage Marion Barry did that institution has yet to be repaired.

To be fair, though, that one and a half miles of the MBT between Franklin Street and L Street NE is not easy to secure.  It isolated from the street, carries little traffic (and I'd imagine less now) and real handy to some seriously scary neighborhoods like Trinidad. Problem is, if you want to ride to Capitol Hill, etc. from Mount Rainier, the MBT is damn useful.  But me, until the MBT crime problem gets solved,  I'll take the surface streets (e.g. RI Ave-4th-Seaton-2nd-Eckington, etc)  I used to ride before it was built.  I don't mind mixing it up with cars. Guys with guns, not so much.

3 comments:

  1. I take offense to the Trinidad comment. My husband and I now live in Mt. Rainier, but before that we lived for years in Trinidad. Yes, the "really scary" Trinidad neighborhood, and not just on the Florida Ave outskirts either, we lived deep in it. Yes, it has it's problems; but so does everywhere in, or near a city. There ia actually a huge sense of community there that I have not seen in places in other parts of the city. (I actually used to work late a few nights a week, and some of the guys hanging out on the corner would always stop what they were doing, walk me to my door, and stay there until I was safe and locked inside.) They have community clean-ups once a month, they have a huge block party once or twice a year as well. True, a lot of things need to change in that neighborhood, but a lot of things also need to change in peoples perceptions of the neighborhood.

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  2. My restless mind wonders why, if Trinidad was so great, you moved. But that's a cheap shot, and it's good you remind us that 99% of the people anywhere are perfectly fine folk. But that other 1% were some real bad actors, and it was only 3 or 4 years ago that multiple people were getting shot on a weekend night in Trinidad and the neighborhood welcome sign was a MPD checkpoint. So I'm while pleased to be corrected that things are improving, you'll forgive me that it took a while for my perceptions to catch up to reality.

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  3. I understand. We actually moved here for more space. Seeing the police reports here every week, there's as much police action here as there it seems!
    It was a tough choice (it was nice to be able to walk all over the city from our front door), but I do love Mt. Rainier though and am happy we have moved here!

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